Thursday, March 04, 2010

A New Class of Paranoia

The Everyday Film's album "The House I Used To Turn Into" was, on first listen, one of the most disturbing things I've ever heard (and maybe on second and third listens as well.) Much of it isn't what most people would even think of as music: a vocoder-ized voice pitched way down loooooow mutters cryptic non-sequiturs, interrupted by brief shards of industrial music-like sounds. "Song" titles include: "The Boy In The Wall," "We Don't Exist Yet," "Budgeted Out The Perverted," and "A New Class of Paranoia." The final track on the short album (27 tracks in 15 minutes) is the sound of some poor soul begging for his life while Mr Vocoder Voice mumbles banalities like "relax in the sun...take a vacation...take a 'me' day..." over unsettling electronic drones. That's entertainment!

Not to scare you all off, but it can be a fascinating, sometimes funny headphone experience, and a wicked beat even turns up:

A 12 minute follow up CD has just come out. It seems slightly less creepy, and the song titles aren't as twisted. It'll still be dismissed as sick shit by 99.9% of the population, tho:

The Everyday Film:Broken Up Love Channels(excerpts)But then again, what else would one expect from the land of Jandek, and the Houston Noise scene? The name "Houston" usually only conjures up images of big bland oil industry high-rises, not cutting-edge culture. Maybe all this stuff is a reaction to the city's sterile corporate reputation. I used to think that Austin was Texas' most mental musical city, what with the likes of Daniel Johnston, Roky Erikson and the Butthole Surfers as residents, but I dunno, Houston is starting to make Austin look like Nashville..